Guro Marc Denny did me the honor of inviting me on to this forum, and I've been remiss in jumping in. I'll introduce myself at greater length later, but in brief: I'm a single dad, a journalist, a martial artist (PTK and Wu Wei Gung Fu.) I lived from 1991 to 2004 in Eastern Europe: Poland (where my son was born), Bulgaria, Serbia, and traveled around the region quite a lot. I lived a year in Saudi Arabia as well.

My blog site is stephenwbrowne.com and you can find out more about me there.

The topic I'd like to get a discussion started on concerns my thesis which is briefly - yes, the left hates America, and I believe I know why.

See the first of a series I wrote about it a while back, which I really need to distill into a more succinct article, but the basic thesis is here. Two men, Abraham Lincoln and Francis Bacon showed my why the people who are arguably the most fortunate individuals in the history of the human race hate the civilization that gifted them beyond the reach of ancient kings.

Likewise, welcome! After your first post a little while back I took the time to read a good number of your writings both at your site and at the newspaper. Very impressive and insightful, covering a lot of the same topics of the forum. I hope you jump into the discussion here on a wide range or things.

I've got news for Sec. Powell. Someone who supports Obama twice and all of the leftist agenda is not Republican. You are a leftist. Be proud of that.

Powell went on Meet the Press to give a show of support for Chuck Hagel. He said regarding Hagel's use of the term Jewish lobby, "that term slips out from time to time".

Yes it does, and so does support for Iran, Hamas, Castro, etc. His ideological matching with Obama is his qualification.

Powell called American DOD official, Douglas Feith "a card-carrying member of the Likud Party." Those slip ups are going to happen??

Hagel is not an anti-semite for what he said but the GOP IS racist for what they didn't say:

Powell went on to say that when Romney supporter Gov. Sununu called Obama "lazy" after his first debate performance, it was short for lazy bleaping nigger(?), the GOP is racist - they just don't say the last parts out loud. Huh?

"guaranteed employment and pay in accordance wit the quantity and quality of their work, and not below the state-established minimum"

"the right to education. This right is ensured by free provision of all forms of education, by the institution of universal, compulsory secondary education, and higher education - free vocational and professional training, improvement of skills, training in new trades or professions, and development of the systems of vocational guidance and job placement"

"the right to rest and leisure... a working week not exceeding 41 hours"

"the right to health protection. This right is ensured by free, qualified medical care provided by state health institutions; by extension of the network of therapeutic and health-building institutions; by the development and improvement of safety and hygiene in industry..."

"the rights to housing...well-appointed dwellings, and by low rents and low charges for utility services."

"the church is separated from the state, and the school from the church"

"It is the internationalist duty of citizens to promote friendship and co-operation with peoples of other lands and help maintain and strengthen world peace."

A more perfect union has been found. (All quotes from USSR Constitution linked above.)

"guaranteed employment and pay in accordance wit the quantity and quality of their work, and not below the state-established minimum"

"the right to education. This right is ensured by free provision of all forms of education, by the institution of universal, compulsory secondary education, and higher education - free vocational and professional training, improvement of skills, training in new trades or professions, and development of the systems of vocational guidance and job placement"

"the right to rest and leisure... a working week not exceeding 41 hours"

"the right to health protection. This right is ensured by free, qualified medical care provided by state health institutions; by extension of the network of therapeutic and health-building institutions; by the development and improvement of safety and hygiene in industry..."

"the rights to housing...well-appointed dwellings, and by low rents and low charges for utility services."

"the church is separated from the state, and the school from the church"

"It is the internationalist duty of citizens to promote friendship and co-operation with peoples of other lands and help maintain and strengthen world peace."

A more perfect union has been found. (All quotes from USSR Constitution linked above.)

You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way Journalists BlowNick Gillespie|Feb. 7, 2013 7:00 pm

Remember back in what was it - 2006 or thereabouts - when left-leaning critics of President Bush couldn't stop talking about how nothing was more red, white, and blue than good old-fashioned American dissent? Why, our very country was founded by an act of dissent, didn't you know! So back when Vice President Dick Cheney - routinely likened to Darth Vader and Voldemort - was running things, the very air was filled with cries of "not in our name" and all that, because it was so damned important that the United States not contravene its basic principles even in the name of self defense!

Those were good times, friends, and they stopped pretty much the minute that liberals and Democrats took control of the federal government. The antiwar movement disappeared once it became clear that Barack Obama wasn't going to shut down Gitmo or stop bombing places or give a rat's ass about that constitutional stuff he used to teach in law school.

But cheer up, because things can always get worse, as the last few days have demonstrated.

There's that report from the Open Society Justice Initiative that despite Obama's soothing intonations to the contrary, the U.S. is complicit in torture up the ying-yang. And of course there's the leaked memo outlining what passes for Obama's decision tree regarding killing suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens. It's a relief to that the president has put his top men - anonymous yet "informed, high-level" officials - on figuring just who should be pinged and when. No need to share information or evidence or anything with either the legislative or judicial branches because that would just get in the way of getting the job done, right? Checking your math and making sure you're not making a bone-headed unconstitutional mistake is for losers. We're at war, don't you see, a new and different sort of war in which the old rules don't apply. And besides, doesn't the authorization of war powers signed three days after September 11, 2001 mean that whatever Obama does is A-OK? So even if we do need rules, Obama's got that covered! Nothing to see here, move along please.

It's sad, though never unexpected, when leaders such as Obama flip flop like a fish on the sand once they ascend power. Cromwell did it, the French revolutionaries did it, Castro did it, the Sandanistas did it, and on and on. It's one of the oldest plots in history and infinitely adaptable to new conditions. How else to explain, as Jacob Sullumn notes, that candidate Obama rejected the Bush adminstration's position that it could detain U.S. citizens as enemy combatants without pressing charges while President Obama claims the right to kill U.S. citizens without laying charges? The guy may not be able to pass a budget but christ, give him credit for ingenuity and brass balls.

But Obama is a politician - what do you expect? Politicians are not just the bottom of the barrel - they're what's under the bottom of the barrel, right?

So what then explains the contortions that journalists fold themselves into like so many carnival sideshow rubber-men in defending their hero? Mike Riggs points to comments by rising liberal MSNBC pundit Toure that suggest just how far explicitly pro-Obama liberals are willing to go in excusing the president's declaring himself and his crew judge, jury, and executioner. As Riggs explains, it seems pretty clear that Toure isn't up to speed on specifics, especially when it comes to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son:

When his co-hosts continue to press him on the consequences of a small group of individuals determing who deserves to die without a shred of oversight, Touré dismisses them by saying, "Al Qaeda attacked this nation. We are attacking al Qaeda back." On Twitter Touré simply said, "He's the Commander in Chief."

Al Qaeda is the new Communism, dig? To invoke its name is to settle all arguments. If Toure is just light on facts, the recent defense of Obama's kill list machinations from Michael Tomasky is more illuminating of the mind-set that controls journalists. Tomasky has been at the news game far longer than Toure and once upon a time penned a fawning "inside" account of what he dubbed Hillary Clinton's "Improbable, Victorious Senate Campaign." After stints at various leftoid outposts such as The American Prospect and The Guardian, Tomasky has now found a perch at The Daily Beast. Back in the day, Tomasky was a reliable critic of everything related to Bushitler, by which I of course mean Dick Cheney. Here he is circa 2009, in a typical post titled "Dick Cheney's Dangerous Game":

Cheney wants Americans to live in fear. He believes that we should be living in more or less constant fear of another attack. I suppose it probably occurred to him over the years that, when a people are whipped into a fearful state, they tend to hand their leaders more power....

Obama wants to move people beyond fear. "If we continue to make decisions from within a climate of fear," he said, "we will make more mistakes." Are the American people up to this? More to the point – and more depressing to consider – are Washington politicians? We will find out as this debate plays out.

This sort of analysis struggles to rise above Goofus and Gallant in Highlights for Children: Goofus constantly invokes real and imagined threats to concentrate his power. Gallant talks a good game about protecting rights even while claiming far more power than this predecessor.

Tomasky struggles with the in-your-face spectacle of a president saying he has the right to pick which Americans can be killed unilaterally by insisting that the important thing is to walk a mile in Obama's mocassins:

I’ve always written about politics with part of my brain focused on the question of what I would do if I were in Politician X’s position. This line of thought came so naturally to me that I imagined everyone did this.... [The memo is] certainly not something that makes the breast swell with pride. But it does make me wonder what I would do in this situation, and I can’t honestly come up with easy answers.

He should try harder to come up with answers, perhaps by halting the mind-meld with the powerful and instead grokking some imaginary solidarity with the falsely accused. After dilating a while on the term imminent as used in

the memo and then deciding that al Qaeda is pretty much always about to attack the U.S., he concludes

Well, either this makes a certain sense to you, or you just think that a state can't be in the business of killing its own citizens and that's all there is to it. There's no doubt that a sentence like "the president has the power to order the assassination of American citizens" sounds positively despotic. However, these are people who have gone off and joined Al Qaeda (the white paper also mentions "associated groups," and one definitely wonders where that line is drawn, precisely). If an American citizen of German descent had gone back to...Germany in 1934 and joined the Nazi Party and worked his way up such that he was involved in the plotting of attacks against American soldiers, and Roosevelt had order him killed, no one would have batted an eye in 1940s America.

You got that? You're either with the president's logic or you can't understand it (shades of George Bush's simplistic, Bible-based manicheanism when he said you're either with us or against us!). There's enough qualifiers in the passage above to give anyone pause, of course: Who are the associated groups after all? How exactly is this like 1940s America? The short version, as even Tomasky eventually grants later, is that "it's not 1940s America." Last time, I checked, Congress declared war against Nazi Germany. And the Nazis kept membership lists which greatly minimized - though didn't eliminate fully - questions of who belonged. Maybe more important, mistakes were made, including the internment of over 100,000 Japanese Americans and alien residents for no good reason other than hysteria. Can we learn at least a little from the past? And not the distant past, either. Enough of the detainees at Gitmo were wrongly held so that you'd figure Obama (didn't he pledge to shut that prison down?) would want to make double-plus sure that he's targeting the right bastards?

But all Tomasky's mental whittling is besides the point, really, because people aren't saying they can't think of scenarios in which the state has the legitimate right to kill bad guys (including its own citizens) without going through every possible aspect of criminal or military due process. The current controversy is over Barack Obama's unwillingness to explain precisely how and when he's been making such calls and exactly where he thinks he derives the right to do so.

Tomasky's colleague at The Daily Beast, David Frum, is not beset with internal strife. A former Bush speechwriter (best known for coining the phrase "the Axis of Evil"), Frum says that just about anything Obama does is plainly covered under the authorization of the use of military force (AUMF) that was signed a few days after 9/11. "That resolution remains in force today," writes Frum. "It assigns to the president - not to some judge - the authority to determine who committed the 9/11 attacks. It assigns to the president - not a jury - the responsibility to prevent any future acts of international terrorism." Leaving aside the fact that it was signed a dozen years ago, the AUMF does direct the president "to use all necessary and appropriate force" to bring the 9/11 terrorists to justice as well as "to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States." While the authorization covers a lot of ground, it doesn't mean that the president, or whoever he designates, can simply do whatever he pleases. As Eli Lake noted for Reason in 2010, the Supreme Court limited President Bush's powers under the AUMF and the Obama adminstration itself pledged to respect international law even while prosecuting the war on terror. More to the point, perhaps, the AUMF doesn't mean that Congress can't oversee or be privy to the president's actions and logic. What does it say about Obama's respect for a separation of powers and the Constitution that he has refused to give the Senate the classified truth on his decision matrix for killing suspected terrorists? Nothing good.

We grudgingly allow the government to surveil, detain, and confront people all the time when various sorts of suspicions are raised; the difference is that there is a clear framework in place so that we can judge whether the government is acting in accordance with the law rather than simply acting on its own impulse. You'd think that Obama - an Ivy League lawyer and a Nobel Peace Prize winner no less- would be proactive in reassuring the Congress and the country that he's not flying by the seat of his pants on this.

By making clear that as a journalist he tries to see things first and foremost from the perspective of the powerful, Michael Tomasky helps to clarify why so many in the media are rushing to the president's defense. They are entranced with power and the view from the top. "Presidents live with that responsibility [of protecting American lives] every day," he writes. "If that responsibility were mine, I can't honestly say what I'd do, and I don't think anyone can." Not all journalists are awed by power, of course, even on the right (National Review's Jim Geraghty, for instance, asserts that this sort of thing of extra-judicial killing policy wouldn't be cricket even under a GOP president).

This isn't ultimately about ideological hypocrisy - of liberals changing their tune once their guy is in office - but something much more basic and much more disturbing. It reveals that for all their crowing about being watchdogs of all that is good and decent in society, when push comes to shove, too many journalists are ready and willing handmaidens to power - including the power to kill.

There's the old saw from Mother Jones - the namesake of today's left-wing publication - that her job was to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." To its credit and unlike too many on the broadly construed left, Mother Jones (the magazine and website) still believes that as it relates to civil liberties. As Adam Serwer has written,

The Obama administration claims that the secret judgment of a single "well-informed high level administration official" meets the demands of due process and is sufficient justification to kill an American citizen suspected of working with terrorists. That procedure is entirely secret. Thus it's impossible to know which rules the administration has established to protect due process and to determine how closely those rules are followed. The government needs the approval of a judge to detain a suspected terrorist. To kill one, it need only give itself permission.

That such an obvious analysis escapes so many in the press is troubling, to say the least. But it makes total sense if, as Michael Tomasky says, you focus first on what you would do if you were in "Politician X's position." The world - and your concerns - must surely look different when viewed from such a lofty vantage point.

Nancy Pelosi with Chris Wallace shows at the link why powerful people like her don't normally do this kind of interview.

Liberals have their own language and it permeates their thinking. Sometimes it doesn't even make sense to her.

"It's almost a false argument to say we have a spending problem"

This bizarre statement begs two questions: 1) We spend a trillion more than the most we have ever been able to figure out how to take in plus 150 trillion of unfunded liabilities. Nancy, we have a spending problem. 2) What is "almost a false argument"? Does she not know that in English that is a way of saying something is true?

"Nothing brings more money to the Treasury of the United States than ..." [public spending].

She believes so strongly that increasing the federal government's involvement in every area equals improvement. She forgets that she never won that argument. The Soviet central control system never did outperform individual freedom and ingenuity. It imploded. Ayers, Alinsky, Obama and Pelosi all have this wrong.------

Didn't President Obama and Nancy Pelosi just say we don't have spending problem? It's almost a false argument. Now Carney is sent out by the same President's handlers to say we do have a spending problem - but it's all healthcare.

Will they use this in future political science classes to illustrate what we mean by talking out of both sides of your mouth?

Clinton's Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers says growth agenda. Then he lays out an agenda that largely skips over taxes and regulations. Good luck. His points if they were numbered 3-8 are actually pretty good:

Could go under Glibness, failed programs, gun control, ACORN corruption or America's inner city, Michelle Malkin hits it out of the park. How come the party of science doesn't tie policies to results?

Who Failed Chicago?

By Michelle Malkin - February 13, 2013

On Tuesday, President Obama and the first lady used the State of the Union spotlight to pay tribute to an innocent teenage girl shot and killed by Chicago gang thugs. On Friday, Obama will travel to the Windy City to decry violence and crusade for more gun laws in the town with the strictest gun laws and bloodiest gun-related death tolls in America.

Does the White House really want to open up a national conversation about the state of Chicago? OK, let's talk.

Obama, his wife, his campaign strategists, his closest cronies and his biggest bundlers all hail from Chicago. Senior adviser and former Chicago real estate mogul/city planning commissioner Valerie Jarrett and her old boss Richard Daley presided over a massive "Plan for Transformation" in the mid-1990s to rescue taxpayer-subsidized public housing from its bloody hellhole. How'd that work out for you, Chicago?

Answer: This social justice experiment failed miserably. A Chicago Tribune investigation found that after Daley and Jarrett dumped nearly $500 million of federal funding into crime-ridden housing projects, the housing complexes (including the infamous Altgeld-Murray homes) remained dangerous, drug-infested, racially segregated ghettos. Altgeld is a long-troubled public housing complex on Chicago's South Side, where youth violence has proved immune to "community organizing" solutions and the grand redevelopment schemes championed by Obama and company.

In fact, as I've reported previously, it's the same nightmarish 'hood where Obama cut his teeth as a community activist -- and exaggerated his role in cleaning up asbestos in the neighborhood, according to fellow progressive foot soldiers. As always, Obama's claims to success there were far more aspirational than concrete.

In the meantime, lucrative contracts went to politically connected Daley pals in the developer world to "save" Chicago's youth and families. Another ghetto housing project, the Grove Parc slum, was managed by Jarrett's former real estate empire, Habitat, Co. Jarrett refused to answer questions about the dilapidated housing development after ascending to top consigliere in the Obama administration.

But as the Boston Globe's Binyamin Appelbaum, who visited the slums several years ago, reported: "Federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale -- a score so bad the buildings now face demolition. ... (Jarrett) co-managed an even larger subsidized complex in Chicago that was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city inspectors found widespread problems." Grove Parc and several other monumental housing flops "were developed and managed by Obama's close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the (federal) subsidies even as many of Obama's constituents suffered."

Democrats poured another $30 million in public money into the city's public schools to curb youth violence over the past three years. The New York Times hailed the big government plan to fund more social workers, community organizers and mentors and create jobs for at-risk youth. But watchdogs on the ground exposed it as a wasteful "makework scheme." One local activist nicknamed the boondoggle "Jobs for Jerks" because "it rewards some of the worst students in the school system with incredibly rare employment opportunities while leaving good students to fend for themselves."

Obama and his ineffectual champions of Chicago's youth will demand more taxpayer "investments" to throw at the problem. But money is no substitute for the soaring fatherlessness, illegitimacy and family disintegration that have characterized Chicago inner-city life since Obama's hero Saul Alinsky pounded the pavement. As Heather Mac Donald noted in a damning indictment of the do-gooders' failures, "Official silence about illegitimacy and its relation to youth violence remains as carefully preserved in today's Chicago as it was during Obama's organizing time there."

Team Obama will find perverted ways to lay blame for Chicago's youth violence crisis on the NRA, Sarah Palin, FOX News, George Bush and the tea party. But as the community organizer-in-chief prepares to evade responsibility again, he should remember: When you point one finger at everyone else, four other fingers point right back at you-know-who.

Left thinker Sunstein reviews "Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism"by Sarah Conly which explains with a straight face why a system of "paternalist" government-based decision making is better than individual free choices. I kid you not.

"Conly convincingly argues that behavioral findings raise significant questions about Mill’s harm principle [coersion can only be to prevent harm to others]. When people are imposing serious risks on themselves, it is not enough to celebrate freedom of choice and ignore the consequences."

CO Democrat: Even if you feel like you might get raped, you may not, so no guns for you

posted at 9:31 pm on February 18, 2013 by Mary Katharine Ham

Downplaying the threat of rape? Check. Questioning the ability of grown, sentient women to perceive that threat? Check. A man in a position of power presuming to know what’s best for women he knows nothing about? Check. Limiting women’s choices by law in potentially life-threatening situations? Check. Six months ago, this was known as the frightful patriarchy. Now, it’s just another member of the Party of Women doing his part for the good work of gun control.

In arguing for the disarmament of college students in Colorado this week, state Rep. Joe Salazar suggested a novel method of self-defense for women on campus— just chill, ladies.

“It’s why we have call boxes, it’s why we have safe zones, it’s why we have the whistles. Because you just don’t know who you’re gonna be shooting at. And you don’t know if you feel like you’re gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone’s been following you around or if you feel like you’re in trouble when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop … pop around at somebody.”

Well, after all, you might not get raped. In Salazar’s world, not only are women incapable of defending themselves against a physical threat, but they are incapable of even identifying a physical threat, and should therefore be deprived of the ability to try. Empowerment! I guess if you are raped, there’s this…safe zone. Look, colleges are welcome to establish safe zones (though criminals are notoriously unobservant of such signage), call boxes, lighted paths, and whistles to help prevent campus attacks. I have benefited from at least a few of these tools, and begrudge no one their use. But I would also like women who choose to arm themselves, in the event that safe zones, call boxes, lights, and whistles don’t work, to retain the right to their chosen tool of prevention.

Revealing Politics has background on the bill in question:

House Bill 13-1226 to prohibit the lawful concealed carry on Colorado college campuses passed the Colorado House of Representatives this morning. Many of the arguments Democrats used to justify the bill included the alcohol and drug use common on campuses coupled with the age and immaturity of average college students. These arguments didn’t resonate with many Republican lawmakers and opponents of the bill who cited Colorado’s intensive training process for obtaining a concealed carry permit and the state’s requirement that permit-holders be 21 years of age, as rebuttal.

Salazar has apologized for revealing how incapable he believes women are. (Notice the framing of the story in local media is not about his comments, but about conservatives objecting to them.)

“I’m sorry if I offended anyone. That was absolutely not my intention,” Salazar said. “We were having a public policy debate on whether or not guns makes people safer on campus. I don’t believe they do. That was the point I was trying to make. If anyone thinks I’m not sensitive to the dangers women face, they’re wrong. “I am a husband and father of two beautiful girls, and I’ve spent the last decade defending women’s rights as a civil rights attorney. Again, I’m deeply sorry if I offended anyone with my comments.”

Charles Cooke notes the University of Colorado’s advice for women under attack. This would be the liberal-sanctioned method of self-defense if the Rep. Salazar method of hoping real hard doesn’t pan out. Passive resistance, bare feet, and your period:

Be realistic about your ability to protect yourself.

Your instinct may be to scream, go ahead! It may startle your attacker and give you an opportunity to run away.

Kick off your shoes if you have time and can’t run in them.

Don’t take time to look back; just get away.

If your life is in danger, passive resistance may be your best defense.

Tell your attacker that you have a disease or are menstruating.

Vomiting or urinating may also convince the attacker to leave you alone.

Yelling, hitting or biting may give you a chance to escape, do it!

Understand that some actions on your part might lead to more harm.

Remember, every emergency situation is different. Only you can decide which action is most appropriate.

“Only you can decide which action is most appropriate.” That is, unless you’d like to use a projectile more potent than vomit, in which case, settle down little missy. You can’t be trusted.

In other “common sense” gun control news, a Washington state bill obliterates the Fourth Amendment for gun owners. Oops:

It seemed in recent weeks lawmakers might be headed toward some common-sense regulation of gun sales. But then last week they went too far. By mistake, they claim. But still too far.

“They always say, we’ll never go house to house to take your guns away. But then you see this, and you have to wonder.”

Responding to the Newtown school massacre, the bill would ban the sale of semi-automatic weapons that use detachable ammunition magazines. Clips that contain more than 10 rounds would be illegal.

But then, with respect to the thousands of weapons like that already owned by Washington residents, the bill says this:

“In order to continue to possess an assault weapon that was legally possessed on the effective date of this section, the person possessing shall … safely and securely store the assault weapon. The sheriff of the county may, no more than once per year, conduct an inspection to ensure compliance with this subsection.”

In other words, come into homes without a warrant to poke around. Failure to comply could get you up to a year in jail.

NYU, a taxpayer owned institution, paid Lew $840,339 in a year and lent him and additional $1.4 million Mr. Lew said that the university "provided a mortgage forgiven in equal installments over five years, and an additional shared appreciation mortgage." Plus severance when he left voluntarily. Citi paid him 1.1 million to run a group that lost a billion and required a taxpayer bailout. Let's put him in charge of the Treasury. Liberals and leftists are up in arms about this. Just kidding.----http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323949404578314412568158962.html

Jack Lew doesn't seem to know much about how or why he got paid.

Senate Democrats are in a hurry to confirm Jack Lew as Secretary of the Treasury before anyone notices his biography. Otherwise, liberal lawmakers might be embarrassed voting for a man who represents everything they've been campaigning against.

Investor in Cayman Islands tax haven? Check. Recipient of a bonus and corporate jet rides underwritten by taxpayers at a bailed-out bank? Check. Executive at a university that accepted student-loan "kickbacks" for steering kids toward a favored bank? Check. Excessive compensation with minimal disclosure? Check.

Like a financial Forrest Gump, Mr. Lew keeps walking into the frame of the business-political dramas of the last decade. But unlike the lovable movie character, Mr. Lew is playing the villain of liberal financial lore. One very compelling role, highlighted by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), was Mr. Lew's star turn as an administrator at a university that encouraged students to borrow from his future employers at Citibank.

Prior to working at Citi, Mr. Lew was the executive vice president for operations at New York University from 2001-2006. He was responsible for NYU's budget and finances. During his tenure the university agreed to recognize Citibank as its primary private lender for student loans. Citibank in turn paid NYU 0.25% of the value of the loans.

Mr. Lew and the school say that Citi offered the payments to NYU only after winning a competitive process to offer low rates to students. Mr. Lew says he doesn't recall much about the arrangement, and he responded to a Grassley inquiry by saying, Gump-like, "I do not believe that I approved the selection of Citigroup as C +0.61% a preferred lender for NYU students."

We never thought it was the crime of the century for universities to get a cut of loan revenue when they recommended particular lenders to students. But politicians like Senator Max Baucus (D., Mont.) referred to these payments as "kickbacks." Yes, the same Max Baucus who has spent his career howling about the Cayman Islands. Yes, the same Mr. Baucus who has now forgotten how outraged he is while supporting Mr. Lew's nomination.

Anyway, after Mr. Lew had left NYU to work at Citi, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo charged in 2007 that the school's payments from Citi had not been adequately disclosed to students and that the school's policy toward Citi created a conflict of interest and violated state laws. NYU settled without admitting any wrongdoing and agreed to a new code of conduct.

We'd have thought this story would offend principled liberals, but then they're also giving a pass to Mr. Lew's fabulous compensation from the tax-exempt school. NYU students shoulder one of the highest collective debt burdens in the country as they struggle to afford one of the nation's most expensive universities. For those who claim after watching Mr. Lew's confirmation hearing that he doesn't understand finance, we say: Check out his NYU compensation package. He sure knows how to get paid.

According to a 2004 report in NYU's student newspaper, Washington Square News, Mr. Lew was paid $840,339 during the 2002-2003 academic year. This meant that Mr. Lew earned more than most of the country's university presidents that year, including his own boss, John Sexton.

After more Grassley inquiries and reporting by the New York Post, it's not clear whether even that astronomical figure covers all the compensation paid to this employee of an ostensibly nonprofit outfit.

The Post discovered in NYU's IRS forms that the school lent Mr. Lew at least $1.4 million. When Mr. Grassley asked the Treasury nominee about it, Mr. Lew said that the university "provided a mortgage forgiven in equal installments over five years, and an additional shared appreciation mortgage."

Mr. Lew says that NYU reported "income related to housing assistance" on his W-2, so it's possible the loan subsidy was counted in the $840,339 figure. We asked NYU and the Treasury to disclose Mr. Lew's total compensation from the school, including benefits. NYU suggested we review their public tax filings and White House spokesman Eric Schultz said only that, "Mr. Lew has answered more questions than any Treasury Secretary nominee in history. He has been fully transparent and responsive to the Committee and deserves a vote as soon as possible."

What Mr. Lew has told Mr. Grassley is that "in addition" to his salary, he received other benefits, including "a one-time severance payment upon my departure." The website for the Obama Department of Labor notes, "Severance pay is often granted to employees upon termination of employment." That's our understanding as well—severance is typically paid to employees being laid off. But NYU says he left voluntarily.

Why would the school shovel still more money to an employee as a parting gift before he heads off to Wall Street? NYU is a university that gets favorable tax treatment on the premise that it is pursuing an educational mission, not a commercial or political one.***

The Grassley inquiry is unlikely to derail Mr. Lew's nomination, because Senate Democrats, the White House and most of the media really don't care. But Mr. Grassley is doing a public service in revealing how liberals redistribute income to themselves. And Mr. Lew is finally delivering educational value to youngsters by providing a lesson for the Obama era: If you want the big bucks, go into the world of taxpayer-backed enterprises.

The firm’s lawyers have struggled to explain publicly that Chiquita had to make a choice between “life and law” and that it chose the “humanitarian” route of protecting its workers. “This company was in a bad position dealing with bad guys,” says Eric Holder, a Washington attorney representing Chiquita. “There’s absolutely no suggestion of any personal gain here. It’s not a case like Tyco, where someone is squirreling money away. No one is out buying great shower curtains.”

Like minimum wage laws killing off jobs, what is good and bad policy, what is right and wrong, and what is constitutional and unconstitutional if you are a lefty is largely determined by the latest public opinion poll.

Was he sworn to uphold the constitution? Did gays change, did the constitution change? Is it too late to impeach him?

Toxic Government by Democrats: MinneapolisApril 4, 2013 By John Perazzo

Editor’s note: The following is the first in a series of articles that will expose the misery of life in America’s poorest cities, all of which have one thing in common: they are controlled exclusively by Democrats. Each article presented by FrontPage will reveal how the production of mass urban poverty is much more than just a failure of leadership, but a means of political survival for the Left.

The city of Minneapolis, Minnesota—whose population is composed of 63.8% whites, 10.5% Hispanics, and 18.6% African Americans—has been governed exclusively by mayors from the Democratic Farmer Labor Party, the state affiliate of the Democratic Party, since 1978.

As of 2011, the poverty rate in Minneapolis was 23.5%, more than one-and-a-half times the national figure of 15%. This differential is consistent with a longstanding, well-documented trend: Virtually all of America’s poorest cities have been led politically by Democrats for many years, even decades. In 2010, for example, not even one of the ten poorest large cities in the U.S. had elected a Republican mayor since the 1980s. In fact, 8 of the 10 cities had been led exclusively by Democrats for more than half a century.

The common thread running through each of these economically decrepit cities is a phenomenon that Harvard scholars Edward Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer famously dubbed “The Curley Effect,” after its prototype, James Michael Curley, who served four non-consecutive terms as mayor of Boston between 1914 and 1950. This phenomenon, Glaeser and Shleifer explain, is the strategy of “increasing the relative size of one’s political base through distortionary, wealth-reducing policies.” Forbes magazine puts it this way: “A politician or a political party can achieve long-term dominance by tipping the balance of votes in their direction through the implementation of policies that strangle and stifle economic growth. Counterintuitively, making a city poorer leads to political success for the engineers of that impoverishment.”

This typically occurs when Democratic administrations adopt policies that redistribute wealth from the prosperous to the poor, causing the latter to become economically dependent upon their political patrons, and thus to become a permanently pro-Democrat voting bloc. At the same time, these redistributive policies cause the people harmed by them (i.e., those from whom wealth is extracted) to emigrate to other cities and states, thereby further solidifying the political power of Curleyist practitioners.

The beneficiaries of Curleyist redistributionism invariably become unable to perceive the connection between left-wing policies and their negative consequences. Instead, they view Democrats as the noble, last line of defense that stands between them and total destitution. As a result, their loyalty to Democrats persists, undiminished, regardless of how bad conditions may get—chiefly because they interpret the failures of leftist policies as evidence that those policies simply did not go far enough, probably as a result of conservative obstructionism. Thus do residents of Democrat-controlled cesspools of poverty and crime continue, in perpetuity, to elect Democrats to political office.

Prior to the permanent Democratic takeover of Minneapolis in 1978, the city’s poverty rate had been consistently lower than the national average. Then, through most of the 1980s, the ripples of the Reagan economic boom delivered a positive effect to cities nationwide, including Minneapolis. Indeed, Minneapolis added some 3,000 new jobs to its downtown area each year from 1981-87. In 1983, only 8% of the city’s metropolitan-area population lived below the poverty level, as compared to approximately 15% nationally.But by 1988, Minneapolis’s left-wing Democratic mayor, Donald Fraser, had grown troubled by the stark contrast between those sections of his city that were thriving economically, and a number of African-American neighborhoods where crime, teenage pregnancy, and welfare dependency were widespread. Fraser believed that the proper remedy for these pathologies would be to implement a host of taxpayer-funded, government-administered social-welfare programs. “What is needed,” said the mayor, “is a more thoughtful discussion, a rethinking of the city, of welfare support, and it should begin right here.” Specifically, Fraser held that federal and local agencies needed to focus more of their attention and financial resources on the economic and social problems confronting unwed mothers and their children. His successors as mayor, Sharon Sayles Belton and R.T.Rybak, have shared this same perspective—a mindset that has fueled the decades-long trend of ever-increasing wealth redistribution and government subsidies for the poor, not only in Minneapolis but across the United States.

By no means is financial hardship in Minneapolis limited solely to low-income residents. Indeed, the city’s homeowners pay higher property taxes than their counterparts in most other metropolitan municipalities. One study of 142 metro areas found that only 15 of them bore a heavier property-tax burden than Minneapolis as of 2010, and that was before Minneapolis raised its property taxes by 4.7% in 2011.

Just as Minneapolis residents face significant economic challenges, so must they deal with the city’s sizable crime problem. In the early 1990s, crime began trending downward in much of the U.S. for various reasons, including the decline of the crack cocaine epidemic, more aggressive policing strategies, and harsher punishments for criminal behavior. New York City, under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and police commissioner William Bratton, led the way in this regard with their CompStat crime-tracking system and their use of the so-called “broken-windows” approach to crime-prevention. In comparison to other cities, Minneapolis was slow to adopt the new law-enforcement and criminal-justice strategies and thus lagged behind the national trend for several years. But once the city changed its ways (e.g., by incorporating CompStat) in the late 1990s, it likewise experienced a noteworthy reduction in crime.

Notwithstanding this positive downward trend, however, crime rates in Minneapolis remain far higher than statewide and national figures alike. For example, in 2010 the violent crime rate for Minneapolis exceeded the corresponding Minnesota rate by 346.55%, and the overall U.S. rate by 161.03%. Similarly, the property crime rate in Minneapolis surpassed the Minnesota rate by 84.44%, and the national rate by 61.27%.

In a particularly ugly develoment, Minneapolis in recent times has been the scene of numerous incidents involving “flash mob” violence, usually by large groups of black assailants targeting white victims. For example, on March 17, 2012, a gang of some 20 young men inflicted serious brain injuries on one young man, just an hour after a large group of assailants had beaten an out-of-town couple in that same location. Six days later, without provocation, 15 to 20 suspects attacked and beat three cyclists, leaving one of the victims with a broken jaw. As Sergeant Steve McCarty of the Minneapolis Police Department observed: “It’s just mainly to create mayhem, assault people and just whatever they can do. It’s a weird mentality I don’t think a lot of people can fathom or understand. Just to victimize people.” And a few days after that, four Minneapolis juveniles assaulted two men in quick succession, rendering one of the victims unconscious and inflicting serious injuries (including a broken arm) on the other.

It has long been commonplace for Democrat-led cities to have much-higher-than-average crime rates. As of 2011, for instance, America’s ten most dangerous cities were all strongholds of Democratic political leadership. Minneapolis’s experience, therefore, is par for the course.

Ted Cruz has made quite an impression in just three months in the Senate. Like Marco Rubio, he is the son of a Cuban exile. He is a extraordinarily talented guy. Unlike Barack Obama, he had a stellar record both in academia and in the practice of law: he was national debating champion, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, clerked for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was named by American Lawyer magazine as one of the 50 Best Litigators under 45 in America, served as Solicitor General of the State of Texas and authored more than 80 briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court. As a law student, Cruz was described by Professor Alan Dershowitz as “off the charts brilliant.” He was elected to the Senate last year in what the Washington Post called “the biggest upset of 2012 . . . a true grassroots victory against very long odds.” So it is not surprising that, just as Cruz has quickly become a hero on the right, the Democratic Party is out to destroy him.

The Post’s Dana Milbank contributed to that effort yesterday. Milbank is a bit like Jon Stewart: he often comes across as a clown, but his underlying purpose is deadly serious. This is how Milbank began his hatchet job on Cruz:

Is there nobody who can tell Ted Cruz to shut up?

The young senator from Texas has been on the job for about 100 days, but he has already turned the Senate’s ancient seniority system upside down and is dominating his senior Republican colleagues. He’s speaking for them on immigration, guns and any other topic that tickles his fancy; Republican leaders are seething at being outshone yet are terrified of challenging him.

If Milbank had any evidence to support this assertion, it would make for an interesting story of the Washington gossip variety. But Milbank, a notoriously partisan Democrat, is no intimate of Republican leaders of the Senate, and he cites no evidence to back up his claim that “Republican leaders are seething,” but “terrified” of Cruz. Milbank did, however, go to the trouble of counting up words at a recent press conference:

Consider his news conference this week to promote the Republican alternative to gun control. …

Cruz took over the lectern and refused to relinquish it. He spoke 2,924 words for the cameras, more than Grassley (904), Graham (1,376) and Coats (360) — combined. Factoring in his dramatic pauses to convey sincerity and deep thought, Cruz’s dominance was even more lopsided. The others shifted uncomfortably and looked awkwardly around the room. At one point, Graham requested a chance to speak. “Can I?” he asked Cruz.

Now, it’s possible that Cruz talked too long. In D.C., it has been known to happen. But I suspect it is more likely that Cruz was delegated to carry the ball at the press conference, and Milbank tells us nothing to the contrary.

But now Milbank gets to the real point:

Cruz is 42, the same age Joe McCarthy was when he amassed power in the Senate with his allegations of communist infiltration. Tail-gunner Ted debuted in the Senate this year….

This is one of the most ludicrous smears in the history of journalism. It would make as much sense to say “Cruz is 42, the same age as Thomas Jefferson when he was named Ambassador to France.” Or “Cruz, like Abraham Lincoln, is tall.” But Milbank wanted to echo the Democratic Party’s chosen route of attack by linking Cruz, however randomly, with McCarthy.

Why? Because “Tail-gunner Ted debuted in the Senate this year with the insinuation that Chuck Hagel, now the defense secretary, may have been on the payroll of the North Koreans.” In fact, Cruz, along with a number of other Republicans, criticized Hagel for refusing to explain his sources of income during the years after he left the Senate. It is reasonable to suspect, given Hagel’s out of the mainstream foreign policy views, that he may have received honoraria from Middle Eastern countries or groups, in particular. What Cruz said–”We do not know, for example, if he received compensation for giving paid speeches at extreme or radical groups. It is at a minimum relevant to know if that $200,000 that he deposited in his bank account came directly from Saudi Arabia, came directly from North Korea”–made perfect sense, given that Hagel was nominated to be Secretary of State.

Milbank goes on to accuse Cruz of lying on various occasions, but in each case, Cruz was right and Milbank is wrong:

On guns, Cruz’s high profile required Grassley to give the upstart a premium chunk of floor time for his trademark falsehoods. Cruz claimed that his bill was the “result of multiple hearings in the Judiciary Committee.” (It was never brought before the panel.)

But Cruz didn’t say his bill “was brought before the panel,” he said it grew out of the Judiciary Committee’s hearings, like this one. There is no inconsistency at all.

He claimed the opposing legislation would extend “background checks to private transactions between private individuals.” (The bill applied to only advertised sales. [sic])

This one is mystifying. Under current law, only federally licensed dealers have to run background checks. The whole point of the Democrats’ proposed legislation and the Manchin/Toomey compromise bill was to extend background checks to private transactions between private individuals, specifically over the internet and at gun shows. Cruz obviously was correct.

Off the floor, he made the patently false claim that the “so-called ‘gun show loophole’” doesn’t exist.

Again, Milbank is simply wrong. There is no “gun show loophole.” Gun shows are treated exactly like everything else: if a licensed dealer sells a firearm at a gun show, he has to run a background check. If a private citizen sells a firearm at a gun show, he doesn’t. Milbank and his fellow liberals may not like the existing law, but Cruz stated it accurately.

If this is the best Milbank and the Democrats can do to illustrate Ted Cruz’s “trademark falsehoods,” they are going to have to come up with a new line of attack.

Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz (born December 22, 1970) is an American politician and the junior United States Senator for the state of Texas, in office since 2013. He is a member of the Republican Party.

Cruz was Solicitor General of Texas from 2003 to May 2008, appointed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. He was the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas,[2] the youngest Solicitor General in the United States, and had the longest tenure in Texas history. He was formerly a partner at the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where he led the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national appellate litigation practice.[3]

He previously served as the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice, and as Domestic Policy Advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush on the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. In addition, Cruz was an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, where he taught U.S. Supreme Court litigation, from 2004 to 2009.

Cruz was the Republican nominee for the Senate seat which was vacated by fellow Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison.[4] On July 31, 2012, he defeated Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst in the Republican primary runoff, 57%–to-43%.[5] Cruz defeated the Democrat, former state Representative Paul Sadler, in the general election held on November 6, 2012; he prevailed with 56%-to–41% over Sadler.[5] Cruz is endorsed by the Tea Party Movement and the Republican Liberty Caucus.[6]

On November 14, 2012, Cruz was appointed vice-chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.[7]

[edit] Early life and educationCruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where his parents, Eleanor Darragh and Rafael Cruz, were working in the oil business.[8][9] His father was a Cuban immigrant to the United States during the Cuban Revolution.[10] His mother was born and reared in Delaware, in a family of Irish and Italian descent.[9][11] Cruz's family returned to the U.S. when he was four years old.[10]

Cruz attended high school at Faith West Academy in Katy, Texas,[12] and then graduated from Second Baptist High School in Houston.

Cruz graduated cum laude from Princeton University in 1992.[13] While at Princeton, he competed for the American Whig-Cliosophic Society's Debate Panel and won the top speaker award at both the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championship and the 1992 North American Debating Championship.[14] In 1992, he was named U.S. National Speaker of the Year and Team of the Year (with his debate partner, David Panton).[15] Cruz was also a semi-finalist at the 1995 World Universities Debating Championship.[16]

Cruz's senior thesis on the separation of powers, titled "Clipping the Wings of Angels," draws its inspiration from a passage attributed to James Madison: "If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." Cruz argued that the drafters of the Constitution intended to protect the rights of their constituents, and the last two items in the Bill of Rights offered an explicit stop against an all-powerful state. Cruz wrote: "They simply do so from different directions. The Tenth stops new powers, and the Ninth fortifies all other rights, or non-powers." [17][18]

Cruz then attended the Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude in 1995.[19][20] While at Harvard Law, Cruz was a primary editor of the Harvard Law Review, and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and a founding editor of the Harvard Latino Law Review.[13] As a student at Harvard Law, Professor Alan Dershowitz said, “Cruz was off-the-charts brilliant.”[21]

[edit] Legal careerCruz served as a law clerk to William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States, and J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.[22][2] Cruz was the first Hispanic ever to clerk for a Chief Justice of the United States.[23]

Cruz served as an associate deputy attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department and as the director of policy planning at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission under President George W. Bush.[21]

In 2003, Cruz was appointed Solicitor General of Texas by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.[2]

Cruz has authored more than 80 United States Supreme Court briefs and presented 43 oral arguments, including nine before the United States Supreme Court.[2][21][24] In the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller, Cruz drafted the amicus brief signed by attorneys general of 31 states, which said that the D.C. handgun ban should be struck down as infringing upon the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.[24][25] Cruz also presented oral argument for the amici states in the companion case to Heller before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.[24][26] Cruz did legal work during the Florida recount during the Presidential campaign of Bush/Cheney 2000.[27]

In addition to his victory in Heller, Cruz has successfully defended the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds,[21][24] the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools[21] and the majority of the 2003 Texas redistricting plan.[28]

Cruz also successfully defended, in Medellin v. Texas, the State of Texas against an attempt by the International Court of Justice to re-open the criminal convictions of 51 murderers on death row throughout the United States.[2][21][24]

Cruz has been named by American Lawyer magazine as one of the 50 Best Litigators under 45 in America,[29][30] by The National Law Journal as one of the 50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America,[31][32] and by Texas Lawyer as one of the 25 Greatest Texas Lawyers of the Past Quarter Century.[33][34]

[edit] U.S. Senate[edit] 2012 electionMain article: United States Senate election in Texas, 2012

Cruz speaking to the Values Voters Summit in October 2011.Cruz's election has been described by the Washington Post as “the biggest upset of 2012 . . . a true grassroots victory against very long odds.”[35] On January 19, 2011, following an announcement that U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison would not seek reelection, Cruz announced via blogger conference call his candidacy for the position.[4] Cruz faced opposition from sitting Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst in the Republican senatorial primary. Cruz was endorsed by the Club for Growth, a fiscally conservative political action committee;[36] Erick Erickson, editor of prominent conservative blog RedState;[37] the FreedomWorks for America super PAC;[38] nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin;[39] former Attorney General Edwin Meese;[40] Tea Party Express;[41] Young Conservatives of Texas;[42] and U.S. Senators Tom Coburn,[43] Jim DeMint,[44] Mike Lee,[45] Rand Paul,[46] and Pat Toomey.[47] He was also endorsed by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and former Texas Congressman Ron Paul,[48] George P. Bush[27] and former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum.[49]

Cruz won the runoff for the Republican nomination with a 14-point margin over Dewhurst.[50] In the November 6 general election, Cruz faced the Democratic nominee Paul Sadler, an attorney and a former state representative from Henderson in east Texas. In the general election, Cruz prevailed with 4,469,843 ballots (56.4%) to Sadler's 3,194,927 (40.6%). Two minor candidates held the remaining 3% of the ballots cast.[5] Cruz won 35% of the Hispanic vote in the general election.[51]

[edit] Committee assignmentsCommittee on Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and CapabilitiesSubcommittee on Readiness and Management SupportSubcommittee on SeapowerCommittee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights (Ranking Member)Subcommittee on Crime and TerrorismSubcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border SecurityCommittee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and SecuritySubcommittee on Science and Space (Ranking Member)Committee on Rules and AdministrationSpecial Committee on Aging[edit] Personal lifeCruz was born and spent the first four years of his life in Calgary before his parents returned to Houston. His father was jailed and tortured by the Fulgencio Batista regime and fought for Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution[52] but "didn't know Castro was a Communist" and later became a staunch critic of Castro when "the rebel leader took control and began seizing private property and suppressing dissent."[53] Rafael Cruz moved to Austin in 1957 to study at the University of Texas. He spoke no English and had $100 sewn into his underwear.[24][54] The elder Cruz worked his way through school as a dishwasher making 50 cents an hour.[21] Cruz's father today is a pastor in North Dallas and became a U.S. citizen in 2005.[17] Cruz’s mother, who was from Delaware, was the first person in her family to attend college. She earned a degree in mathematics from Rice University in Houston in the 1950s, working summers at Foley’s and Shell.[17] Cruz has said, "I'm Cuban, Irish, and Italian, and yet somehow I ended up Southern Baptist."[55]

Cruz and his wife, Heidi Cruz, have two daughters, Caroline Camille and Catherine Christiane. Cruz met his wife while working on the George W. Bush presidential campaign of 2000. Cruz's wife is currently head of the Southwest Region in the Investment Management Division of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and previously worked in the White House for Condoleezza Rice and in New York as an investment banker.[56]

[Relying on CRAp and the rest of the failed GSE/Fannie Mae programs] "Black families were hit disproportionately by the housing collapse, because heading into the recession housing constituted a higher proportion of their wealth than for white families, leaving them more exposed when the market crashed. Higher unemployment rates and lower incomes among blacks" [that got worse under the Pelosi-Reid-Obama's war against enterprise] "left them less able to keep paying their mortgages and more likely to lose their homes, experts said".

"When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover," he said. "And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms. It hits Oregon with acidified seas, it hits Montana with dying forests. So, like it or not, we’re in this together.”

He continued, "You drag America with you to your fate."

- Sheldon Whitehouse, United States Senator, not the Daily Show, Democrat of Rhode Island---------

I wonder what the uproar would be if a Republican Senate candidate said something similar. They wouldn't become a U.S. Senator.

former Democratic National Committee head and current Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe blames Bush for his dad dying. Really. In an interview in May 2001, McAuliffe said that his father, Jack, died because “he could not go into a new year knowing that a Republican was actually moving into the White House.”

Obama’s ‘Chicago Way’ The administration’s political tactics are straight out of the Daley playbook.

By John Fund

The scandals swirling around the Obama administration have many journalists scratching their heads as to how “hope and change” seem to have been supplanted by “arrogance and fear.” Perhaps it’s time they revisit one of their original premises about Barack Obama: that he wasn’t influenced by the Chicago Daley machine. You know: the machine that boosted his career and whose protégés — including Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, and his wife, Michelle — he brought to Washington with him.

The liberal take on the president was best summed up by Slate magazine’s Jacob Weisberg, who wrote last year that Obama “somehow passed through Chicago politics without ever developing any real connection to it.” It’s true that Obama initially kept some distance from the machine. But by the time he ran for the Senate in 2004, his main political Sherpas were Axelrod, who was then the chief consultant to Mayor Richard M. Daley, and Jarrett, the mayor’s former deputy chief of staff. As Scott Simon of NPR noted: “While calling for historic change globally, [Obama] has never professed to be a reformer locally.” The Daley machine, which evolved over 60 years from a patronage-rich army of worker bees into a corporate state in which political pull and public-employee unions dominate, has left its imprint on Obama. The machine’s core principle, laid out in an illuminating Chicago Independent Examiner primer on “the Chicago Way,” is that at all times elections are too important to be left to chance. John Kass, the muckraking columnist for the Chicago Tribune who for years has warned that Obama was bringing “the Chicago way” to Washington, sums up his city like this: “Once there were old bosses. Now there are new bosses. And shopkeepers still keep their mouths shut. Tavern owners still keep their mouths shut. Even billionaires keep their mouths shut.” “We have a sick political culture, and that’s the environment Barack Obama came from,” Jay Stewart, the executive director of the Chicago Better Government Association, warned ABC News when Obama ran in 2008. He noted that Obama had “been noticeably silent on the issue of corruption here in his home state.”

Joel Kotkin, an urban expert who still considers himself a “Kennedy Democrat –– John F. Kennedy,” wrote at Forbes: “Most of us would put up with a bit of corruption and special dealing if the results were strong economic and employment growth. But the bare demographic and economic facts for both Chicago and Illinois reveal a stunning legacy of failure.” Since 2007, the Chicago region has lost more jobs than Detroit has, and more than twice as many as New York. The city’s murder rate is a national disgrace, and its teachers’ union is so powerful that a strike it called last year forced new mayor Rahm Emanuel to back down from his attempt to curb union power.

The Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch tags Chicago as the fifth most heavily taxed city in the country: Its sky-high effective sales tax of 9.75 percent makes the tax burden on a family earning $25,000 a year the fourth highest in the country. From 1991, two years after Richard M. Daley first took office as mayor, to 2011, the year Emanuel took the reins, the average debt per Chicagoan grew from $600 to $2,600, an increase of 433 percent. As Dick Simpson, a former reform Chicago alderman who now teaches at the University of Illinois, put it: “There’s a significant downside to authoritarian rule. The city could do much better.”

Conservatives in Chicago, an embattled breed, say the Obama scandals now coming to light — the IRS, the intimidation of journalists, the green-energy boondoggles such as Solyndra — could have been anticipated. “The 2008 Obama campaign perpetrated a fraud that he was a reformer,” says Chris Robling, a former journalist who has served as a Republican election commissioner. “All of the complaints — from the lack of transparency to HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s shaking down corporations to promote Obamacare — stem from the culture of the Daley Machine.” For decades, Robling says, Mayor Daley “encouraged” contributions to his favorite charities, with the implicit understanding that the “encourager” controlled the city’s inspectors and regulators. “That sounds an awful lot like what Sebelius was doing to prop up Obamacare,” Robling notes. “Obama’s ideology may come from Saul Alinsky’s acolytes, but his political tactics come straight from the Daley playbook.” Indeed, friends of Bill Daley, Mayor Daley’s brother, say that one reason Bill left his post as Obama’s White House chief of staff after only one year was that even he thought Team Obama was too much “all politics, all of the time” and not enough about governance.

Journalists used to know that presidents are in part a product of their past: where their careers were nurtured and where their politics were shaped. They understood this as a given when it came to Ronald Reagan and California; they basically grasped it about Bill Clinton’s Arkansas, and certainly nailed it on George W. Bush and Texas. But when it came to Barack Obama, all that went out the window. Speaking at the University of Southern California, at a post-2008 conference on the election, Mark Halperin, then of ABC News, said that the media’s treatment of Obama had been “the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war.” It was “extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage,” he concluded.

That media failure continued throughout Obama’s first term. Perhaps now, as Obama’s “Chicago Way” is coming into focus, the media will want to redeem itself. With Obama, it’s become all too clear: You can take the politician away from the machine, but you can’t take the machine out of the politician.

The Washington Post is comfortable putting forward an opinion piece that leave readers with a false knowledge of the facts:

Regarding the IRS, Dana Milbank says the GOP shoots first, asks questions later. FYI to Dana Milbank, the questions have all been asked. The letter was written by a Democrat. It is the ANSWERS that are lacking. Does Milbank really not know that the questions were asked and the answers were not forthcoming?

This observation from Crafty's post in US Economics is too good to leave in just one thread:

... a “negative feedback loop from hell,” where states that are suffering with large debt overhangs and dwindling tax revenues don’t have the money to pay or invest in things like infrastructure, education, and public safety. As those services begin to deteriorate over time, states will be forced to raise taxes, which only reinforces the decline.

"Ironically, Kristin Davis, the madam infamous for her role in the Spitzer scandal, is also running for comptroller (only in New York!). But unlike Spitzer's, Davis' candidacy is not being taken seriously, despite the fact that she has performed well in debates in her previous runs for office. Instead Davis is laughed off, in part because she is a convicted felon. What was she convicted for? She served time for her role in Spitzer's prostitution scandal. He never did. --Keli Goff, TheRoot.com, July 8

Story HighlightsSo far seven women have accused San Diego Mayor Bob Filner of sexual harassment.New York now has the infamous serial sexter Anthony Weiner running for mayor.Weiner's wife has stood by him throughout.

Back during the 2012 election, Democrats were quick to seize on some Republican words -- like Todd Akin's remark about "legitimate rape" and late-term abortion, orRush Limbaugh's calling Sandra Fluke a "slut" for wanting free birth control -- to build the notion of a "war on women."

But if you look past words to actual deeds, most of the action in the war on women seems to be coming from the Democratic front lately. Just consider these cases:

First, Democratic San Diego Mayor Bob Filner. So far seven women have accused him of sexual harassment. According to one report, Filner said, "You'll have to excuse me for what's about to happen. It's your fault," before pinning a woman in a restaurant booth. Other allegations include kissing, grabbing and assorted other inappropriate behavior.

As is usually the case, this stuff was no secret within the world of San Diego Democratic politics, but even though there were complaints, the leadership supported Filner anyway until things went public. And even afterward, until the pressure became too great, Democrats supported him. As with Bill Clinton, and his alleged assaults on Paula Jones, Juanita Broddrick and Kathleen Willey, tribal loyalties to party kin outweighed any concern for women as a group -- or for the accusers as individuals. The accusers were tossed over the side until the publicity became too strong to ignore. Democrats -- like Hillary with Bill -- stood by their man, Tammy Wynette-style.

Then take New York. Please. New York now has the infamous serial sexter Anthony Weiner running for mayor. Unlike Clinton and Filner, the women Weiner was involved with seem to have been entirely consenting. Though the names involved (Weiner's online pseudonym was "Carlos Danger," and one of his virtual paramours -- a former Obama campaign worker and anti-Sarah Palinpetitioner -- went by "Sydney Leathers" though that, shockingly, is her real name) seemed like something from a 1970s porn film, the sexual contact involved seemed voluntary enough. It was just pathetic.

Even more pathetic was the fact that for Weiner this was the second time around, after giving up his congressional seat for, basically, the same thing in 2011. For Weiner, the "War On Women" aspect has more to do with the doormatization (Is that a word? It is now) of his wife, Huma Abedin. Long a star to people on the left, for reasons that Slate's Dave Weigel finds somewhat unclear, Abedin has stood by Weiner throughout, even putting on a rather embarrassing press conference appearance.

But now that her stand-by-your-man routine has gone from the possibly noble to the clearly ridiculous, even liberal writers such as The Atlantic's Elspeth Reeve are saying that "Huma has lost her halo." Indeed, even as Huma was delivering quotes for rehabilitative puff-pieces in People and The New York Times, it's now clear that she knew that Weiner hadn't been rehabilitated at all, leaving some to say that she's even worse than he is. People are even starting to ask about how Huma could work for the State Department while consulting for people who dealt with the State Department. Her future political career, previously bright, seems seriously tarnished.

As Gloria Allred's daughter, Democratic attorney Lisa Bloom, notes, Weiner's treatment of Huma could be described as a kind of spousal abuse. Well, whatever it is, it's not indicative of any particular respect for women. Weiner, meanwhile, seems to have been weirdly jealous for an online philanderer. Leathers reports: "Me being hit on by other men really upset him. We were Facebook friends, so he could see if men were commenting on photos of me, or telling me that I was pretty. Really minor things like that really bothered him." Uh huh.

Then there's former New York governor and attorney general Eliot Spitzer, better known as "client #9" for his extensive patronization of call girls. As far as I'm concerned there's nothing wrong with that: These were consenting adults, and if it were up to me, I'd make prostitution legal everywhere the way it is in Nevada. But even while patronizing call girls, Spitzer was also going out of his way, as attorney general, to see that they were prosecuted. It's usually Republicans who are charged with sexual hypocrisy, but this is first-rate phoniness.

The funny thing, though, is that in the press, an isolated remark by a Republican candidate or radio host is treated as representative of the entire party. The behavior of these Democratic officeholders and candidates, on the other hand, is treated as an isolated incident -- and in many of the national media reports regarding Filner, his party affiliation is omitted, or not mentioned until paragraph 12.

But do I think this behavior betrays a special contempt for women on the part of Democrats? Well, not really. I think it demonstrates a contempt for people in general, and especially for voters. But then again, why shouldn't they be contemptuous of voters? Look who elected them.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is professor of law at the University of Tennessee. He blogs at InstaPundit.com.

It is quite strange to hear the far-left punditry call the most far-left possible governance - not far enough left. I should have sent my previous de-bunk of this straw to Reich last time. He clearly does not read the forum. Now it seems the inequality worsened under Pelosi-Reid and then under Obama. Hmmm. What policies then are needed to cure it? Why won't he say it, if you want all to be equal you must use what in math they call lowest common denominator. For incomes to be equal with people who don't produce or don't produce abundantly, others must stop or slow their efforts. How does THAT make us better off?

" income, wealth, and power have become more concentrated at the top than they've been in ninety years."

"Make no mistake: The savage inequality America is experiencing today is deeply dangerous."----------------

Oh good grief. Among the bunk: static, snapshot analyses always avoid the facts of income mobility. Every new worker, illegal, immigrant or otherwise, brings down the median without lowering any one person's income. Every successful retiree who moves from producing income to living off of earned, accumulated wealth moves down in income while moving up in leisure and perhaps quality of life. Our measures of income for the poor do not measure their income. Our measures for income of all do not include their wealth. The top 1%, 5%, 20% or 50%, or bottom quintiles or half, are NOT the same people when you make comparisons versus a year ago, a decade ago or in this case, over three and half decades. The only interruption in the Reich income inequality scare was when the Pelosi-Reid-Obama congress precipitated the recent, historic collapse of wealth in this country. But after the devastation, paraphrasing Wesbury, the plow horse continues to plow and not everyone is equally invested and pulling.

The real test of an economy is what opportunities or choices do you have, not just what is your immediate outcome.